Monthly Archives: January 2010
Pesticide pushers kill thousands in Bangladesh
Thousands of Bangladeshi workers are dying of pesticide poisoning each year, as a result of unsafe use of often banned products.
Meanwhile, safer, greener agricultural methods are ignored in the face of a sustained and richly-resourced promotional campaign by multinational pesticide producers.
An annual government health survey has found that pesticide-related poisoning may be responsible for several [...]
Climate change is a class issue
Global warming, pollution and the environmental impact of energy production impose a greater burden on low-income and disadvantaged communities.
The message, spelled out in papers in a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Justice, includes a call for urgent strategies to prevent inequities.
Papers in the dedicated ‘climate justice’ issue emerged from a US conference on [...]
Four digit fine for four digit loss
A UK plastics recycling company has been fined £2,500 after a worker had four of his fingers severed.
Wesley Dickinson, 22, was trying to remove a guillotine jam at Centriforce Products Ltd in Liverpool when his fingers became trapped. Doctors reattached two of his fingers, but they have limited movement.
The company, which admitted breaching safety regulations, [...]
US work safety chief calls for good safe green jobs
The newly installed leader of the US government’s workplace safety watchdog has made his first public act a call for green jobs to be good, safe jobs.
On 9 December 2009 David Michaels was confirmed as the Obama administration’s Assistant Secretary of Labor for occupational safety and health.
The head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration [...]
Waste and recycling is a sick industry
Workers in the UK waste and recycling industry have much higher sickness rates than other local authority workers, research by a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) agency has found.
Review of sickness absence data in the waste and recycling industry, a report prepared by the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL), found the sector recorded more days [...]
Confused UK recycling sector is really deadly